Search This Blog

Goodbye Cold World

Folks, I have seen hell and let me tell you, no bright lights or tunnels made an appearance.

Amravati district in Eastern Maharashtra. Where the temperature on Tuesday was 45 degrees C without even trying. The district project coordinator we met on the day phlegmatically remarked that we were lucky since the temperature on Monday was 47 degrees. Uhuh.

I have experienced such heat only when I lived in the UAE. Even there, we had the good grace to exist in a cucoon of air-conditioning, only venturing outside in the evening. In Amravati, any work worth doing gets done between 5 - 10 am after which time only desperadoes and the suicidal are on the roads. And us of course... the intrepid cast of 'Social Workers sans Frontiers... & Brains'.

Just after we'd attacked a very good roadside dhaba & started on the visions of a beautiful siesta, one of the people I was touring with insisted on being taken for a drive.At 2:30 pm.Right.

In what I suspect was a fit of malevolence, the long-suffering coordinator decided to fulfill the chap's request by driving us to the hill-station of Chikhaldara. No doubt a normally delightlful journey, the winding roads and hairpin bends on the journey were then negotiated at a speed of around 65 kmph. This, the afternoon furnace (heat being too mild a word) along with the feeding frenzy that had just taken place ensured that one of the other fellows along on the trip thrice pleaded in a quietly determined tone for the vehicle to be stopped. After which, the lunch, mid-morning snack and breakfast proceeded to decorate the landscape in a fashion similar to Jackson Pollock's work.

Needless to say, I could not wait to get out of there. For one, I had begun to have out-of-body experiences while being wide awake. I think. For another, missing the train would mean waiting at Amravati for another 24 hours, during which time this blogger would have been 'well done' in the steak terminology. On a side note, if there is one thing I hate with a passion, it is the summer sun. My dream is to live in some cold, blustery port city in the far north where days of sunlight are a rarity & hence welcomed. Anyway, while waiting at the station, I received a call from my boss. Apparently we've landed a new project on preventing child labour. I will be coordinating (at least in name) this project, quite likely meaning monthly visits to the district where the work will be undertaken.

Popular posts from this blog

I usually don't write honest pieces. They're true to facts but I tend to lather my emotions and thoughts with a heavy dose of attempted humour or misdirection. This post deserves some raw emotional honesty, though.

Yesterday, 29th August, a Tuesday (or should I say, another Tuesday) was about me making choices. It was raining quite heavily when I left for office, sheeted down the windows of the train throughout the 1-hour journey to Churchgate and kept going with renewed intensity by the time I made it to the entrance, looking verily like something that had drowned in a gutter and lain there a while before being discovered by a cat and dragged in. I made the choice to go to work as I suspected my boss would be there and not because I wanted to go.

I was right about my boss but that cardiac fizz of being right flattened out rather rapidly once I realised, around 11:30 am, that no one else from my team of 20 had bothered to make a similar effort. And, some of these guys live 5 …

(This post hasn't come out as well as I wanted. But I'm still pissed off, so.)

Why do we have heroes? What is it about someone that triggers a decision to nail our colours to their mast? I don't have a neat answer so what you read from here on is both an explanation and an exploration. In a post-modern world driven by counter-points, certainty is a luxury.

I missed the boat when it came to India's ODI cricket madness. We moved abroad in the late 80s. When I left, my friends and I wanted to be Kapil, Kris or Sunil. When I returned, god was getting comfortable on his heavenly couch and all was right with a world I did not recognise. I had missed Sachin's opening batsman debut against New Zealand, the hullabaloo of the Hero Cup and other notable moments. So, I was interested in cricket, not any particular sportsman. Not even during the '96 World Cup. When India muffed it against Sri Lanka, I hurt for the team, not for a player.

Have you noticed how we throw things out a lot more than before? Of course, city-dwellers like us have more, now that disposable incomes are the norm. Does it also allow us to dispose of things so easily? I was the object of much mirth/ridicule at work today because I wanted to get a golf umbrella repaired. One colleague wondered if it was worth the effort, another asked why I did not just buy a different one while others chuckled when they realised neither of these thoughts had occurred to me. I trudged off, wondering if they were right. What exactly was driving me to take the trouble?

I think back to to the 80s and living in my Thatha's (grandpa) house. Today's 'use-and-throw' culture would have shocked him to the core. The man was the epitome of prudence. Since we weren't exactly floating in doubloons, the family followed suit. Thatha wore the same watch for over 50 years. A small umbrella, bought by my mother with her first salary, was well on its way to becom…